


The Dreamers Finally Wake Up

by apanoplyofsong



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-09
Updated: 2015-10-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:54:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4961386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apanoplyofsong/pseuds/apanoplyofsong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They find each other, in every life, again and again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dreamers Finally Wake Up

**Author's Note:**

> Title and loose inspiration from the song "Past Lives" by Borns, which you should listen to if you want a lot of feelings. This is pretty prose-y, fair warning.

Bellamy is eight when he figures out he's lived this before. 

Octavia is in the hospital, tiny and sick with too many wires and tubes poking out of her arms, and his mother is pacing in the hallway, talking about Medicaid and deductibles and things he doesn't really understand. Octavia's chest rises and falls too quietly, too heavy. For a moment, he thinks it's stopped, her body stilling for seconds longer than he’s been counting, and Bellamy's certain he's lost her, certain she's gone, certain he's failed the only thing he ever felt was _good_. 

His veins flash hot and his mind starts screaming that it doesn't happen this way; that he always, always goes first because he's stupid and reckless and brave and determined that it will be him, _not_ his sister, who reaches the wolves first. It's a kind of certainty that makes him go still, just as Octavia breathes again.  

Clarke is thirteen before she knows. It's her birthday and she's slipping through the hallways of school, smiling at the people who pull her in for hugs, when a flash of hair shifts the world silently. She feels like the first time she tried on her dad's glasses; everything too sharp and too focused, straining her eyes to piece things back into the places she’s known. The rest of the day is spent searching for a head of curls, dark and shining in a sea of harsh lights and disarray. She doesn't find it. 

They meet when Clarke is twenty-three and Bellamy twenty-six, and know each other immediately. There are thirty days wrapped into each other, reliving memories they haven't breathed yet, before the car turns to shattered glass and whipping trees and silent blood, dripping through the windshield.

 

* * *

 

Clarke doesn’t know when it started—the feeling that part of her is always one step behind, ducking around every corner and falling into place when the rest of her waits. By the time she’s seventeen, she feels it at every stop light she sits through, a physical pull at the nape of her neck, like someone snapping elastic under her skin. Her fingers never stop tapping, her eyes never stop seeking. She tries to pick up charcoal but it falls.

Bellamy turns fifteen and the ghosts find him. Spirits swirl around his head, blue and sharp-tongued, and slowly, he realizes they know him. They are a part of him, pieces of himself he either hasn’t met yet or has forgotten.

The spirits stay until he’s nineteen, standing on the steps of the college library, a girl with hair the color of sun-bleached hay smiling at him like she’s found something good. He can feel their sighs echo silently before they disappear.

The two of them fall together bit by bit in this time, fiercer and gentler and like fire all at once. When they finally kiss, drunk on red wine and smoky air; there’s a flash of something like déjà vu, like coming home, like watching stars align.

The world ends in thirty years, and they face it together.

 

* * *

 

He is twenty-four and anxious. Certain something’s wrong, certain something’s missing, certain he doesn’t know what it is yet. The Ark is aching and empty and Bellamy finds himself waiting, waiting. There is cold silver everywhere.

Clarke is newly twenty and turning through stark metal hallways, looking over her shoulder every three steps. The medic’s computer sent her down to this station, ordered her to check door E-17 for someone behind it who might have run a fever at one point in their lives. She doesn’t trust it, this technology that the last hope of humanity’s still sorting out. It feels like she’s always being watched, can’t relax in her own skin, doesn’t think there’s an actual reason for her to be here. She knocks anyway.

Then the door opens and she’s breathing his name and he’s gasping hers and the knowledge spills out from some untapped well. And they know. Soon she’s trapped against the wall, his knee pressed between her thighs, and he’s carding fingers through her hair, whispering _Clarke, Clarke_ into the skin of her neck, her chest, the soft fuzz that covers her ear. Bellamy swears he’ll never forget the way her name tastes again.

The Ark spins and they itch because they know, they know they’ve been down there before or again. The ship orbits the earth and they decide to orbit each other instead.

 

* * *

 

On the cusp of eighteen, Clarke sees visions she aches to paint on her prison cell walls. Waters move quietly and trees whip madly and she can smell something green in the air. There are sounds she's never heard from the Ark's whirring fans, and there is so much beauty it tastes bitter. It is nothing she has seen in the films. This world is wilder. Something whispers to her,  _patience_. 

Bellamy is twenty-three and desperate when the voice comes into his head, tells him to open the door, tells him to aim a little lower, tells him there are oceans at work. While he tries not to tremble in the cramped dropship space, he replays the images that come into his head. He convinces himself he can see leaves turn crazed under stormy skies and feel something warm settle into the palm of his hand. Everything asks if he's ready to fall. 

In this life, everything is slow and chaotic. Earth brings sandpaper and war banners and too many fractures, and nothing comes easy in its air. They fight against and for and with each other, wiping blood from the other's hands. Every cataclysm draws them closer.

The time does comes, gradual and sudden in all its glory. They have scars and stars tattooed onto palms and cheeks and burned into the ground when they realize what they've found, that their echoes are of one another. In this new light they are frantic, raw, stronger.

They find their way home, together.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I can be found on tumblr [here](http://apanoplyofsong.tumblr.com/) or for fic-related things [here](http://apanoplyoffic.tumblr.com/).


End file.
